What Will Get Us First: The Oceans or the Nukes?

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog's Favourite Living Canadian)

MADISON, WISCONSIN—With all the clamor and all the glittering swamp gas attending the presidential election, it's easy to overlook the fact that there's a lot of stuff going on that's more important than whether or not obvious anagram Reince Priebus's mellow is being harshed because his dream of a wonderful summer week in Cleveland is even odds to turn into World War Z. For example, the president's conducting a summit aimed at establishing some kind of sensible international policy that would deal with the preposterously unregulated underground bazaar of black-market nukes.

A special session is planned to examine the nuclear ambitions of the Islamic State. "Having this many leaders together at once provides us an important opportunity, in the wake of the recent attacks in Brussels and other countries to address how we can enhance our capabilities to work together to confront the threat posed by ISIL," says White House advisor Rhodes. No more nuclear security summits are planned after this one. "The real question for this nuclear security summit is, will the leaders take enough action to put us on a path where nuclear security will continue to get better," says nuclear proliferation researcher Matthew Bunn of Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. "Once we're not meeting at the summit anymore, will attention turn elsewhere and progress stall and eventually erode, leading to a higher danger of nuclear terrorism? " Much will depend, Bunn says, on the next president.

I'll bet. Of course, in the current campaign, we're debating about whether to keep all Muslims out of the country and/or spying on the neighborhoods of the ones already here.

She was upset about what happened, but not surprised. "He had a lot of anger about the police in the past," she said. "He pretty much thought he wanted to be infamous...in terms of having a showdown. He always praised those people who got into shootouts with police." Court records show James Brown III had been charged with murder, intent to kill, aggravated battery with a firearm, failure to obey police, resisting a corrections officer, aggravated battery of a pregnant woman, aggravated battery of an unborn child, numerous drug charges, intimidation, domestic battery, felony possession of a weapon, among many driving charges.

The great ice sheet, larger than Mexico, is thought to be potentially vulnerable to disintegration from a relatively small amount of global warming, and capable of raising the sea level by 12 feet or more should it break up. But researchers long assumed the worst effects would take hundreds—if not thousands—of years to occur. Now, new research suggests the disaster scenario could play out much sooner. Continued high emissions of heat-trapping gases could launch a disintegration of the ice sheet within decades, according to a study published Wednesday, heaving enough water into the ocean to raise the sea level as much as three feet by the end of this century. With ice melting in other regions, too, the total rise of the sea could reach five or six feet by 2100, the researchers found. That is roughly twice the increase reported as a plausible worst-case scenario by a United Nations panel just three years ago, and so high it would likely provoke a profound crisis within the lifetimes of children being born today.

That kind of sea level rise would be catastrophic in and of itself. The run-up to it would be just as bad. Massive dislocation, food riots, epidemic disease, and basically everything that Moses brought onto the Egyptians squared. And this is the position on the industry held by the candidate in the Republican party best capable of defeating a vulgar talking yam.

Next week, coal champion and Murray Energy CEO Bob Murray is hosting a fundraiser for Cruz. Murray didn't go so far as to actually endorse Cruz—keeping his options open with Donald Trump—but he noted in an interview with The Hill that Cruz is the best candidate on coal. And he specifically cited the December 8 hearing as a reason for his material, if half-hearted, support.

I've long felt that the climate crisis may be one problem that our system of government and politics is incapable of solving, our system of government and politics being too firmly anchored in unreality. It's too daunting for our limited supply of political courage, and fighting it depends on too many politicians spurning too many people who give them too much money. And the hell of it is, none of that matters because physical laws don't care who wins the freaking debate. The ice goes and the seas rise and there's no speech you can give to hold it all back.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here's Alf Landon being nominated in 1936. "The Kansas Coolidge." That's a tough one to live down. But I like "tax-eating bureaucracy." The people at the convention seem to be enjoying themselves. Republicans used to be such fun.

One of the interesting developments here in Wisconsin is the fact that becoming Speaker of the House may have been one of the worst things that ever happened to Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver and first runner-up in our most recent vice-presidential pageant. We all remember that he failed to carry even his home precinct for Willard Romney back in 2012, and his name was roundly booed when it was invoked at a rally for He, Trump in Ryan's hometown of Janesville. Now, and you may not believe this, but it looks like Ryan's going to face a primary challengefrom…the…right.

"Paul Ryan's embrace of big government spending, his continued support of illegal immigration and imported workers, and his championing of the job-killing trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership betrays me, this district, and this nation," he said. "He's failed to put America's security and American jobs first. I've had it. We've all had it," said Mr. Nehlen, a successful executive, entrepreneur and inventor who previously donated to Mr. Ryan's campaigns."Ted Cruz and Donald Trump have become front-runners in this presidential election cycle because they have dared to communicate an anti-establishment message. They won't be alone," he said. "I will bring the fight straight to one of the most powerful establishment players in Washington, taking him on right here in Wisconsin's 1st District. Paul Ryan is a career politician. It's time that career came to an end."

Bear in mind that Nehlen's challenge is based on the premise that, as Speaker of the House, Ryan betrayed The One True Cause by helping to pass a federal budget. Cannibalism is an acquired taste but, once you develop a taste for your own, it's a hard jones to kick. If they think Trumpism will disappear when He, Trump disappears from the scene, they're fooling themselves, because what produced Trumpism is deeply fundamental to the Republican Party's essential identity. I, for one, continue to despair of the rebranding.

Also, gang? If you are arguing against He, Trump on the basis of criticisms mounted by influential voices like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, your party has much deeper problems.

The NCAA and its apologists—Hi there, Seth Davis!—have mounted a sturdy—if completely fantastical—defense of the college sports cartel centered on this weekend's men's Final Four in Houston. There's a spate of new house ads proclaiming the virtues of how the NCAA cares for its "student athletes." There are conference commissioners pretending that the house is falling out from beneath them and their fat wallets. And then there's the prime national semifinal on Saturday night between Syracuse and North Carolina, two schools currently ensnared in massive alleged academic fraud, in UNC's case going back decades. FWIW, I'm rooting for Villanova and Jay Wright, in part because I like how the team plays, and in part because I'm terrified of Top Commenter Judy Clay.

It's a big week for anniversaries. First, Chris Hayes and the crew at All In, which has recently been kind enough to allow me to darken their towels on a regular basis, celebrate three years on the air. And the remarkable Driftglass, one of my earliest blogging heroes and someone who has been most kind since I opened my own shebeen along the docks of Blogistan, has been annoying all the right people for 11 years now. (And Providence has bestowed upon him an anniversary gift.) God bless us, every one.

Top Commenter Of The Week: A lot of fine candidates, but we have to hand it to Top Commenter Terry Moran, for his imaginative recasting of the mayor of Tulsa as a chapter in the Kama Sutra: I can't tell you how much it tickles me to know that FOTP's Mayor is named Dewey Bartlett. Must be a sexual euphemism for something. Like, "I slid down her body, parted her knees, and gazed upon her Dewey Bartlett." Any other ideas, gang? He loses a couple of Beckhams for asking for suggestions from you lubricious bastids, but the Dewey Bartlett needs to be a meme. And 91.34 Beckhams for you, good sir.

Pachycephalosaurus stands out in the dinosaur pantheon as the largest, last, and, thanks to The Land Before Time and Jurassic Park: The Lost World, most famous of the "bonehead" dinosaurs. They roamed western North America in the same haunts as Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops between 68 and 66 million years ago, their thick, rounded skull domes highlighted by a tonsure of little spikes surrounding the outer edge. And, as is the case with most dinosaurs, the name of the species conjures up images of the adult animals in the prime of life, yet we know that Pachycephalosaurus started out life as tiny hatchlings. The small skull bones Evans and Mark Goodwin have described get us closer than every before to the early days of this thick-skulled dinosaur.

There will be some weekend blogging as we come down to the wire here in America's Dairyland. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snakeline or I'll make you spell Pachycephalosaurus three times fast.

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